34 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



rows of piles, generally in regular order, were driven at short 

 distances from each other, the heads being brought to a general 

 level with the outer boundary. Upon these piles a rough plat- 

 form was constructed, often consisting of one or two layers of 

 unbarked beams lying parallel to one another. Upon this plat- 

 form rude houses were erected, the extent of the platform and 

 the number of houses being of course regulated by the number 

 of persons of which the settlement was composed. That 

 portion of the platform which was within the area of each 

 house was covered with clay mixed with gravel, firmly 

 beaten down to form an even floor, and each house had a 

 proper cooking-hearth. The houses appear to have been rect- 

 angular in form, their sides consisting of wattle and daub, and 

 the roof thatched with straw or rushes. These platforms were 

 always at some distance from the shore, with which they were 

 connected by narrow bridges, formed also on piles. Whether 

 the footways of these bridges were movable does not appear ; 

 but it is probable that this was the case, in order to prevent 

 surprise on the part of an enemy desirous of attacking the settle- 

 ment from the landward. It appears that all the refuse from 

 these dwellings was thrown into the water below, through open- 

 ings left in the platform for that purpose. The general con- 

 ditions under which the earlier of these people appear to have 

 lived is the more especially interesting to us, because, singularly 

 enough, it is to the condition of the aboriginal New Zealanders, 

 as described by Cook, that Dr. Keller compares the degree of 

 civilization to which the inhabitants of the settlement of Meilen 

 had apparently attained, as indicated by the remains discovered. 

 After extracting from " Hawkesworth's Voyages," Vol. III., 

 page 395, a full account of the habits of life of the New Zea- 

 landers as there given, he proceeds to show the close resem- 

 blance to that account which is indicated by the remains found 

 at Meilen and many other of the more ancient lake settlements. 

 He then tells us, in regard to their domestic economy, (with 

 reference particularly to the supply of vegetable food,) that in 

 < very lake-dwelling were to be found stones for bruising and grind- 

 ing grain, or what are called corn-crushers and mealing- stones ; 

 that the very grain itself has been found at Meilen, Moosseedorf, 

 and Wan gen, nay, even the very loaves or cakes in their original 

 form ; and that we must therefore recognize the colonists as 

 agriculturists, and see them advanced to that grade of civiliza- 

 tion in which men have permanent abodes, and have secured for 

 themselves some degree of social order. He remarks that the 

 tilling of the ground must have been simple in the highest 

 degree, and have consisted merely in tearing it up by means of 

 inefficient tools made of stags' horns or crooked branches of 

 trees, as is still done by some of the North American Indians, 

 and was formerly done (as regards crooked pieces of wood and 



